Neal Ball

4 minutes ago, checkrail said:

Nipped up to the ELR yesterday for a ride behind 4079 'Pendennis Castle' from Heywood to Rawtenstall and back. The Castle was in splendid nick and fine form.  I last saw this loco pausing at Starcross with a down stopper in the summer of 1961.

 

 

 

John C.

Lovely loco John. I am hoping it’s at Didcot when we get over in the summer. 

3 minutes ago, Harlequin said:

That sounds like rubbish to me unless it’s a very special type of speaker.

 

He showed me a photo and dimensionally it was the same size, but half the height.

Of course anything is better than the puny speaker Accurascale supplied.

I shrugged my shoulders and put to down to facebook - 🤣

Some more photos from yesterdays running session:

Anthony Manor seen approaching Henley-on-Thames with the c23 clerestory 3rd carriage:

Plus two photos of Grange class 4-6-0 6860 on the approaches to Henley-on-Thames. I couldn't decide which one I prefer:

Both speakers are the same size squeezed into the small Collett tender. I am of the view that the bigger size speaker will offer the better sound.

When I posted the image of the Manor and its new speaker onto Facebook, someone said I should have gone for a slimmer version from Roads and Rails..... interesting thought, it would have been easier to get in, but I still cant get my head round the logic..... Anyway, I am happy with my large Youchoos speaker.

It was only right that my Grange loco was hauling todays train of two sunshine carriages and the C23 clerestory carriage.

My Manor class loco was waiting to take over and take the carriages away from Henley-on-Thames.

On the day that 6880 Betton Grange was launched to its supporters, I finished off the C23 Clerestory all 3rd carriage..

Thanks to Tony @brumtb for both this carriage and the body kit for the County tank.

All the door furniture is now on and we even have some passengers gazing out of the windows.

Essentially at this point in their life, this would have been a strengthening carriage to add extra 3rd class seats. With 10 compartments at (say) 4 across - this carriage would have 80 extra passengers. I'm sure on busy Regatta days, it would have been standing room only - so we could easily be talking about 150... 5 across, plus 5 standing...  probably more.

2 hours ago, MrWolf said:

Great job Neal and something different from all those prairie tank variants.

 

If and when I can get back to The Bench of Bodge I have a 2-4-2T in the pipeline and seeing your County up and running is making me more determined to see it through.

Thanks Rob. Probably the hardest part is getting enough weight into the loco. If your 2-4-2T is a normal white metal kit then you will be fine.

It looks as if the leading bogie needs more weight adding to it, so that’s going to be a plasticard box made up with lead shot added. The idea being to stop the leading wheel riding up on the double slips!

1 hour ago, Nick Gough said:

Looks good and perfectly at home at Henley.

Thanks Nick - I’m very pleased with it - it’s taken a lot to get here!

Quick update! The loco has just brought 6 carriages effortlessly into Henley-on-Thames 😎

1 hour ago, MAP66 said:

Superb work Neal, it's all about the fettling as I am beginning to find out.

Can I ask where you source your coal from, is it real coal crushed up or do you use one of the so called realistic scatter types, as I have never found anything of the right size and realistic as yet.

Thanks, fettling seems to be an on-going project which is why the loco was sidelined for a bit.

The coal is mainly geoscenics which I bought as a coal load bundle years ago at Warley. Locos and wagons get the same coal now.

7 minutes ago, Andy Keane said:

That's a lovely model Neal. I suppose they ran into Henley back in the day?

Thanks Andy.

No 2237 was a Reading based engine until about 1934 when it was sent for scrap. There are a couple of photos of County tanks at Henley-on-Thames on local services.

Strangely I have not found any photos of the County 4-4-0 locos at Henley, but I suppose the County tank, together with Pannier tanks might have been sufficient in the 1920's and early 1930's until the 61xx were introduced. At the same time you started to see Hall class 4-6-0 locos as well.

Thanks again,

At the same time, the a23 Clerestory is being glazed.

The carriage is seen drying - At the same time I test fitted a door handle and grab handle.

Manor news!

My Manor loco has had its coal load applied - it is still just as loud 😎 and I have used a little bit of weathering powder to try and reduce the shine form the LED lights.

Seen here with the e153 Composite Brake 3rd

1 hour ago, Andy Keane said:

I think I will get one of the Zimo Dumbo 8 ohm speakers and use that on my Manor, which has the accurascale sound project so getting the best of both  worlds. It should allow the smoke box speaker to be used alongside the dumbo.

Good luck Andy, let us know how you get on.

As ever with something like this, I relied on the advice from John at Youchoos to determine the maximum I could do.

Regards, Neal.

Evening all, thank you for the comments - we’ve been in Benidorm for the day! It’s very Marmite, but if you stick to the old town then it’s very good.

A return coach trip for €12 each isn’t too bad and we met up with some friends from the UK. ( it’s 1 1/2 hours drive from here or 2 hours by coach ) bargain at €12?

To answer your questions and comments as below:

11 hours ago, Andy Keane said:

If you get stuck I will cut a bit of mine off my stock and stick it in an envelope!

Thanks Andy, I will try the tat shops here and see how I get on. (Our Chinese tat shops sell everything)

8 hours ago, Gopher said:

Thanks for posting this Neal.  I think there is a huge improvement in sound volume and quality.  I think I'll have to do the same.  I did replace the tender speaker with a larger flat speaker (so no surgery required, apart from removing the factory fitted speaker).  The sound was only marginally improved IMHO.  Can I ask did you remove the loco body to disconnect the smokebox speaker ?

 

It is a lovely loco  but definitely let down by the low volume on the sound project (for those of us who are fans of DCC  sound).  I wonder if Accurascale will re-engineer this to fit a bigger speaker in the tender in future releases ?  I guess not if the sound fitted versions are selling well despite the volume issue  

 

Thanks

 

Clive

Thanks Clive, I looked at removing the loco body, but decided against. I merely snipped the cables in the tender marked LS. 
 

You would hope that Accurascale do a louder sound, perhaps @McC could advise,
 

6 hours ago, Harlequin said:

Accurascale are very aware of the sound volume/quality issue from the feedback they got when the Manor was first released so we can hope that they will make changes.

 

(I think the people who are happy with the factory sound have probably never hear a good steam sound project before...)

 

I did a similar upgrade but I removed the circuit board entirely so I have more room for a speaker. It's documented somewhere on here. Found it:

 

Yes the loco is lovely and yes the factory fitted sound is underwhelming.

5 hours ago, MAP66 said:

Nice work Neal, I will soon be tackling something not too dissimilar when I attempt to install a sound decoder, speaker and stay alive into the tender of a Bachmann Fowler 7F. Having never tackled anything like this before it was timely to see your efforts have paid off and it was good to hear the sound on the video.

Thanks for this, good luck with the 7F.

3 hours ago, Andy Keane said:

Neal

have you wired this in series or parallel with the smokebox speaker? I am wondering about the total impedance the sound chip is driving.

Andy

Both of the original speakers have been removed (tender) and isolated (smokebox).

I should add that wiring in this way has invalidated the Accurascale warranty 🙁🙁

2 hours ago, Gopher said:

Andy - I think Neal dis-connected the smokebox speaker, so only using the Youchoos 4ohm

 

Clive 

Agreed.

1 hour ago, Andy Keane said:

Interesting. I think Phil @Harlequin left his connected and got to 4 ohms in total. I wonder if having both is worthwhile. I assume the inbuilt decoder is happy at 4 ohms but I guess it invalidates the warranty.

The size of speaker I chose, didn’t allow that to be an option. I pushed it for size and sound!

1 hour ago, Harlequin said:

I think it would be worthwhile if the speaker in the smokebox was also upgraded to something with a bigger sealed enclosure.

 

BTW @Neal Ball, giving the sound a clear path out is as much about the sound quality as the volume. The little plastic box of the tender does something to the sound.

 

What really lets my Manor upgrade down is the sound project. Instead of barking it wheezes... When the Accurascale project is pushed through a decent speaker, as Neal has done, it does sound better.

 

I’m very happy with the sound project now, it’s made a big difference.

54 minutes ago, Andy Keane said:

Is this a YouChoos set of recordings you are using?

No, I’m using the Accurascale sound project,

Hope that Helps guys.

Note my comment earlier guys; by doing this change it has invalidated the Accurascale warranty. 🙁 let’s hope Accurascale upgrade the sound project to be louder on the next batch of Manors.

Plus of course any future steam loco must be LOUDER 😎

6 hours ago, The Fatadder said:

New arrival today, the NIU models part for the testing shed for a King.

 

its one of those parts that I had been intending to draw and print myself, but didn’t have a good drawing to work from (and it was deep down the list of stuff to draw from photos)

 

disappointing to see they printed the lamp irons solid, there is no good reason for this with it being well within the capabilities of printing.  These will need to be very carefully removed and replaced with etches (hopefully without damaging it.)   It arrived still fitted to its supports, no doubt to keep it safe, and has been printed on a solid base (I do the same on prints to keep edges square).

On the whole aside from the lamp irons I’m happy with the part

 

One slight issue was that the  model felt  slightly tacky to the touch, usually indicating it wasn’t quite fully cured.  So before priming ive put in my curing unit for an extra 5 mins of uv treatment after removing all of the supports.   I would have removed those lamp irons as well if I’d had a proper look first!

 

I haven’t done any tidying to the model yet, so the top edge is as it was when cut off its support.  This will get a tidy up with a file tomorrow before priming and painting.  I’m assuming they would be bare wood?

 

it fits the King nicely, fitting in front of the lamps that had already been fitted to this loco.  I think ideally it needs gluing in place so I will need to decide which of my Kings will get this permanently attached 

That’s going to be a nice addition Rich. I assume there would be two fellas inside, peering through the windows? I can’t have been nice inside there.

6 hours ago, Harlequin said:

Hi Neal,

I know I'm going to sound like a stuck record but you could get the sound even better if the speaker wasn't covered by the solid plastic coal load.

 

The video doesn’t really do the sound justice. From sounding like a whisper (so much so, that the radio often drowns it out!), it’s now very loud.

Someone commented on Facebook that I should have used a thin speaker from Road and Rails, but I think the depth of the enclosure is also making a difference.

As you know, I always work on the basis of squeezing the biggest possible speaker into the space.

I was very surprised at how small the Accurascale speaker was.

Next week, I will look to see if we can buy metal glaze here and give it a go.

2 hours ago, mallaig1983 said:

Lovely video Neal. Nice to have some camera panning of the layout which looks fantastic. There is a noticeable difference in the volume and it sounds great. I do absolutely love a Manor 😀

It’s been a long time to get to this stage - I can’t believe the original sound is so low - far lower than the videos show. But now it’s a decent sound to rival my Youchoos fitted sound Castle class locos.

I don’t mind low sound, as long as I can turn it up, but the original Manor project is at max….. so it’s obviously a speaker issue.

Accurascale should have spec a bigger / beefier speaker. Leaving that aside, it’s a lovely loco and runs very well.

Im looking forward to their 57xx.

20 hours ago, Harlequin said:

This is the current state of my Dean 8ft 6in bogie CAD based on the drawings in Russell:

 

There are a few things that I know are not right.

 

Wow! - presumably thats the CAD, what are the test prints like?

Excellent work.

6 hours ago, BWsTrains said:

 

Thursday/ Friday I think, according to the link. Steam options are shown.

 

FWIW, I couldn't choose a station, this is such a wonderful railway filled with the strongest memories from my childhood.

Yes! Thank you -Thurs / Fri.